Stakes Is High
The strategy that we follow so we can live lives of meaning and fulfillment that contribute to human flourishing is:
Follow your conscience, no matter the obstacle and no matter the cost.
Devote your time and attention to the quest for your talent’s optimal expression.
Develop the skills, make the sacrifices, and take the leaps of faith that will be necessary to master your craft and transform your talent into skill and peak performance.
Never surrender your quest for your integrity, flow, and flourishing.
That is the strategy. Once you begin to create your step-by-step plan to master your craft and unleash your talent’s optimal expression, you will be confronted by uncertainty, self-doubt, and loss aversion. Loss aversion is an inescapable aspect of human psychology that manifests in your decision making process. Human beings fear a loss more than they desire an equivalent gain, and they will act according to that calculus. Loss aversion is the reason that most people live lives of quiet desperation. It is the reason that most people do surrender their quest for their talent’s optimal expression.
We surrender to uncertainty, self-doubt, and loss aversion because we imagine that the worst possible loss is an unsuccessful attempt and the frustration, embarrassment, and sense of rejection that follow. When we imagine those stakes, we decide that the quest is not worth the hassle. That is a tragic misunderstanding of the stakes. When you precisely define and truly understand the stakes, you can make loss aversion work for you.
An effective decision making framework makes loss aversion work for you by precisely defining the stakes for how you use or misuse your time. The optimal expression of your talent is at stake. Your contribution to human flourishing is at stake. Meaning, fulfillment, and personal flourishing are at stake. Your integrity is at stake. You may arrive at the notion that your life is at stake, but so much more than your life is at stake. Your spirit is at stake. If you waste your talent, then your spirit dies, and if your spirit dies, your life becomes a spiral of regret, resentment, despair, and destruction. Those are the stakes. That is the worst possible loss. Unsuccessful attempts, frustration, embarrassment, and rejection are child’s play by comparison.
With this precise definition of the stakes, you can make loss aversion work for you. Align your decisions and your actions with the strategy that allows you to avoid the worst possible loss, especially when that same strategy offers so much to gain.
What do you stand to gain? You stand to gain everything… the optimal expression of your talent, your contribution to human flourishing, a life of integrity, meaning, fulfillment, and personal, spiritual flourishing, freedom from regret, resentment, despair, and destruction.
You get what everyone gets, you get a lifetime. How long is that? No one knows. So how much of your time and attention are you willing to waste?
Every time you make a decision that wastes your time and attention, you risk losing everything. Every time you make a decision that is aligned with your quest for integrity, flow, and flourishing, you get closer to that life and all of the attendant gains. Now that you know that, you can devote your time and attention, and your decisions and actions to the quest for your talent’s optimal expression. You can devote your time and attention to a life of meaning and fulfillment that contributes to human flourishing.
The stakes for your decisions and actions are literally as high as you can imagine. You stand to lose everything, and you stand to gain everything. Make loss aversion work for you, especially when there is so much to gain by avoiding the worst possible loss. Precisely defining and truly understanding the stakes opens the door to a life of: authenticity, courage, focus, clarity, accountability, discipline, sacrifice, community, audacity, faith, integrity, and flow.
Define the stakes. What is the quest that is worth the struggle and the sacrifice that will be necessary to master your craft? What is the optimal expression of your talent? What is the greatest possible contribution you can make to human flourishing through the optimal expression of your talent? What are your non-negotiable priorities? Who are you, and what do you want to do about it? What’s the biggest, most important problem you can solve with your talent and your skill, and what’s your plan to solve it?
Never surrender your quest for your talent’s optimal expression, because one person’s talent can change the world.